


Unheard

by peaceloveandjocularity, stateofintegrity



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-22
Updated: 2020-05-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:35:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24324394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peaceloveandjocularity/pseuds/peaceloveandjocularity, https://archiveofourown.org/users/stateofintegrity/pseuds/stateofintegrity
Summary: Charles' sensitive hearing allows him to hear just what the members of the 4077th think of him.
Relationships: Maxwell Klinger/Charles Emerson Winchester III
Comments: 4
Kudos: 21





	Unheard

It took certain qualities to become an aficionado of performed music rather than a mere audience member. He had put in the time. He had acquired the knowledge. He was a fine musician in his own right, though he preferred to play the strange, unwieldy instrument that was the (wounded) human body. A quality he had also acquired was the ability to listen well, to sift through sound. This skill worked against him in his new environs, became a dagger that turned in his grasp and left him gripping the blade, blood dripping from his fingers into the dirt.

In his first seventy-two hours in camp, his exceptional hearing taught him exactly what the rest of the 4077th thought of him.

**The nurses:** Tall! And that accent! Too bad he’s cold as a reptile in a freezer.

**The mps:** Mr. High and Mighty Surgeon.

**The corpsmen:** He doesn’t look down on you. Too much effort. He just looks straight through.

**The colonel** : Winchester is a dab hand at cutting. Sure wish he’d limit it to the OR, though!

**His tentmates:** We’re requisitioning an expansion to the tent. We need space for Charles’ ego.

**The** **_chaplain_ ** **:** I shall pray that God softens his heart toward us... or increases our patience with him!

Not one positive remark. He had vowed to move ahead with unbroken spirit, but his first week in Korea had him thinking of stuffing cotton balls in his ears to keep from hearing any more (it reminded him, absurdly of Stoker and the superstition of stuffing the mouths and chest cavities of vampires with garlic).

Then, on day eleven, he heard this:

“Oh, I don’t know, Radar. The Major isn’t that bad. His eyes are kind. I don’t think he can be as bad as everyone says he is and still have eyes like that.”

***

Days later, when an angry patient tore through Potter’s office and left it in shambles, Klinger resignedly set to work setting it to rights. Passing through, Winchester noted the Herculean nature of his task and stopped to help.

When Klinger realized that he was not alone in his struggle, he asked, “Why so eager to help, Major? Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate it, but,”

“It goes somewhat against my reputation as a selfish prig?” The smile he wore was rueful, directed at himself. “Klinger, do you remember a few weeks ago I came in here and you knew it was me without turning around?”

“Sure. Your cologne is the real thing.” Klinger didn’t know what scent Charles wore but he knew that Osage orange vied with black oak polished with lemon oil in it.

“Could you have told if it was the Colonel or nurse Houlihan?”

“Yep. She smells like carnations and gunpowder and he smells like saddle leather, Sophie, and cigars.”

“As your nose can parse smells, my ears can parse sound. I trained myself to hear just one part of an orchestra if I so desired - just _ one _ ! Here... well the things I hear said about me are not flattering. “

Klinger blanched a little. He could imagine.

“During my time here, there has been but a single exception.” He straightened a pile of papers, tapping the bottom of the sheets until they aligned. “You.”

Klinger waved him off. “You’re working with quality people here, Major. Let them in a little and you’ll see - and hear, too, I’ll bet! You just have to let people really see you. There’s a lot worth looking at!

***

The compliment stayed with him, re-emerging at odd moments during which he would break out in a grin that completely transformed his face. At those moments, the nurses would reconsider their former opinions and wonder what it would be like to be kissed by a man like that.

And despite every facet of his personality and upbringing that strongly vetoed the idea of taking advice from a swarthy, dress-wearing company clerk, Charles began, albeit glacially, to let the others in. He asked for advice that he didn’t need from the other surgeons and thanked them graciously. He even unbent enough to drink with them after hours.

He still found Margaret’s compulsive come ons unnerving (she didn’t even seem aware she was doing it!) but when he ordered from Tokyo, being one of the few who could afford the shipping, he tried to include something thoughtful for her or some food item she could share out amongst her staff. Jellybeans were mysteriously popular.

He even allowed Colonel Potter to instruct him on the proper grooming of his horse, the most anachronistic item in a camp that was no stranger to surplus that went back nearly two wars. He was covered in horse hair when it was over, but the Colonel softened toward him enough to pat him on the shoulder and dub him a good egg. Balding as he was, it wasn’t his  _ favorite _ compliment, but he took it just the same.

And his efforts did not go unnoticed. Two weeks in, Klinger appeared in the Swamp with the type of gift basket he was usually asked to assemble for Hawkeye and his dates. “What’s all this?” Winchester asked when it was placed on his desk.

“My uncle’s in the construction business, Major. I worked summers for him. Tearing down walls uses up a lot of calories.”

With a wink, he was gone again, leaving Winchester in possession of such delicacies as horehound candy, baklava, deviled ham, plum jelly, oolong tea and some lemons. Charles smiled, knowing that Max had basically gone around as an offerings collector. Each treat on his tray represented a donation from the folks with whom he had been hijacked into serving.  _ Welcome to the 4077th _ , he thought, and smiled.

***

Several weeks into his purgatory, Charles’ ears picked up a new sound, a discordant note in the 4077th symphony. It was late at night, nearer to daybreak than to day’s end. He was working in the OR, but it was quiet. Patients slept; the next round of meds wasn’t due for three hours. He heard liquid plinking - single silver droplet by single silver droplet - into IVs. He heard trucks rumbling through the compound, distributing supplies. And something else... a sound underneath the others.

He left the desk in the corner of OR and turned his head, trying to hone in on the elusive noise. He strode through the OR doors with their ever-smudged porthole windows. The sound cut out abruptly. Charles stayed very still. Then he made a turn, set out as if to return, and heard it again.

He was certain, now, of what he’d heard. And he knew whose cot was located between the OR and the Colonel’s office. Walking with surprisingly soft steps for a man of his size, he went to Klinger’s cot and lowered himself onto the end.

“May I offer a sympathetic ear, Corporal?”

Klinger started then swiped at his eyes. “Way to sneak up on a guy, Major!”

“Apologies.”

“I didn’t mean for anyone to hear me. Didn’t take your ears into account I guess.” He swiped at his eyes.

“I hesitated to intrude on your privacy, but you can hardly expect me to turn away when you were the first and, for a time, the only, one to show me any kindness.” He reached out and used one crooked finger to brush away a glittering tear. “What is it, Max?”

The clerk’s hands opened to encompass the camp, the war-that-wasn’t, Korea herself. “Just this place. Usually I can smile my way through it, but it’s been rough lately. Too many bodies. Too much blood.”

Charles noted the bandage on his arm. “Including yours, it seems.”

“Gotta pitch in. I’m a popular type... though I guess every type is popular on the line.”

“How many times?” He knew that camp personnel often disregarded regulations about how often one should donate blood when a push was on.

“Too many. I’m sure that’s not helping my mood. But it’s just all of it, you know? The dirt and the smells, the weather and the food. Being afraid every second of every minute. Listening to my heart beat all night just to make sure it’s still there. It’s like a cage and I can’t figure out what I did wrong to get put in it.”

The words were not as eloquent as the ones Charles would have voiced himself, but the sentiment was the twin of what had existed in his own soul since he’d set foot in this terrible place. “A cage,” he mused. Fitting. Hadn’t he felt the bars sometimes burning and sometimes freezing against his skin? Hadn’t he thrown himself against them only to find that what appeared to be red tape was reinforced with razor wire? “A trap.”

“Right. But the army’s smarter than hunters. If an animal chews its foot off, a hunter would let it go. You shoot yourself in the foot here, they just put you in an even smaller cage.”

“Well, as you are perfectly well aware from my own struggles, I don’t have the key for getting out. Would you settle for a few hours pretending we aren’t here?”

“What do you mean?”

“A sort of planned escape. I think I know a place where we won’t be able to hear the war. My rounds are over in a few hours. Come with me?”

“Okay, Major. It’s a date.”

“Excellent. Now drink something, would you? There’s coca cola hidden in the refrigerator with the blood. Your blood sugar’s gone too low.” He took two steps and turned back to add, “If it is a date, wear those dangling diamond-looking earrings, would you?”

Happily aghast, Klinger threaded the hooks through his ears then sat back to slowly sip sugary liquid as he waited for the sun to rise.

***

At 6:57 in the blessed AM, Colonel Potter scratched his head and blinked, trying to reconcile what his sleep-addled mind insisted he had just seen. He stroked the muzzle of his mare. “Coffee first and then our morning ride, from now on, girl,” he told her. “Otherwise I start imagining things!” Though why his mind would muse on Klinger and Winchester walking arm in arm together into the morning, he couldn’t figure.

***

They walked away from the camp and to a meadow. As their distance from the camp increased, Klinger looked at his companion. “How are you holding up, Major?”

“Perfectly fine, Corporal. Why do you ask?”

“You were up all night. Shouldn’t you have caught some shut eye?”

Charles felt strangely touched. In Korea, no one asked after his welfare with genuine interest. Pierce and Hunnicutt rode him if he looked ill or upset; Potter merely worried that his surgical abilities might be compromised. “I’m fine, Max.”

“Because you’re a Winchester? You folks don’t need sleep either?”

Charles smiled. “Because I packed coffee.”

Klinger didn’t realize they had reached their destination until Charles created a hole in the undergrowth and gestured for him to walk through. Inside was a sort of shelter created by broad-leaved plants.

Charles demonstrated that he had sought this refuge before when he unrolled a bundle of blankets and set out the army version of a picnic spread. Then he made himself comfortable and bade Klinger lie down beside him. He pointed out the butterflies hanging upside down, wings folded. He read poetry aloud and rabbits, mice, and other small skitterers came to listen and drink dew from the grass.

It was like its own world - a tiny space that knew nothing of war. Klinger breathed easily and was surprised to note that it felt so strange to do so. Charles watched him calming and gave a smile and a nod when he did so. Once, for just one moment, Klinger reached out and squeezed his hand.

***

Their first date was a quiet collection of colors: the green of the leaves absorbing sunlight like green glass, the white flash of the earrings in Klinger’s ears, the gilt letters on a book of poetry. Their next took place in the cool blue of evening.

This time, Klinger asked. Charles would never tell him so, but the hopeful, trembling way he did it endeared him to the Major forever; it had been such a long time since someone looked at him with ardent hope, had let him know, without ever saying so, that he meant a great deal. “I never get to wear the really fancy earrings,” he’d joked and Charles had called that “a pity,” before agreeing and holding his hand to his lips. 

Klinger could still feel the warmth of his mouth as he dressed. When he saw Charles in the mirror, he jumped. “You are the quietest person,” he started to say, but then the Major was threading the earrings through his ears, fastening the backs. It was a type of intimacy he’d never experienced or expected and it shook him. 

Charles knew that if he kissed the back of his neck in that moment, he’d have him. “Shall we?”

Klinger led and they walked into hills that showed black against blue hour twilight. They paused on a hill above the camp. 

“It reminds me of a park back home,” Klinger explained, spreading a blanket on the grass. “When it’s dark like this it doesn’t look like Asia anymore- just plants and trees.” 

Winchester thought of the family estates, the manicured grounds, the vacations to hunt in misty hills, the beach house at the Cape. They felt very far away as he sat down and drew Klinger against him - and worth far less than the slight frame in his arms. 

“I can’t take you out of Asia, regrettably,” he admitted into the soft darkness of his hair, “not yet, anyway. But if I can, I will try to stand between you and this place to which you never ought to have been sent.”

It was the best offer Klinger had ever received. “Thanks, Major.” He squeezed his hand, still a little awed at the reality of his presence, his affection- so new, so impossible to imagine even a few days ago. “I don’t think they should have sent me either - what good am I to anyone as a soldier? - but I’d have hated to miss this.” 

Charles smiled. “As would I.” 

Later when the darkness had anchored itself more firmly to the hills and the constellations burned more brightly above them, Klinger said, “What did you mean when you said ‘not yet,’ Major?”

Charles rubbed gentle fingers across his clever mouth. “Caught that, did you?” Then, “Would you object to coming home with me, Corporal?”

There were unsaid words behind the question but Klinger heard them anyway. “You’re in love with me?”

“You have to ask?” 

“I can still visit Toledo, right?” 

“I’ll buy you an apartment for that very purpose if you wish it.” 

Though he knew they would face challenges, strange match that they made, Klinger agreed. As he slept, Charles listened to him breathing deep and slow, calm in the knowledge that he was safe. It was the best sound he’d heard since shipping out and he silently congratulated himself on making it, henceforth, a permanent part of his life.

End! 


End file.
